MoparFins

December 13, 2017, 07:41:45 PM

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Well speedo is out by about 10mph, guess my speedo gear in the NV4500 is set for a 4.10, not a 3.54 rear. SO that will throw off my MPG a bit,but even cutting off 10% of my total mileage I'll still be around 600+miles on my fill up in a day or two.

I've ordered all the pieces to retro my A/C system under the hood, andI'm not using any of the original parts other then the compressor, and a new Expansion valve, other then that everything will be new or retro'd.

Found out my upper ball joints and inner tie rods are on the way out.But the parts truck I had last year had new upper control arms in thecab, new Moog BJ's and new bushings, so that costs me NADA... I'm going to order new inner and out tie rods as well. Might replace the lower BJ's since I'll haveeverything apart anyway.

Need to find and original tranny cross member, since the C-channel theyused to make the mounts are a little lacking, there is only one bolt oneither side to hold the mount to the frame! Wonder what would happen if I loaded the drive line up....

I've also picked up a front seat from a 94-98 2nd Gen dodge ram. Ireally like having the armrest and dual sliding seats, for his and hercomfort.

I'll have to redo the floor mount brackets and tracks to get it to sitas low as possible, one of the draw backs to being 6'8"... But should be able to knock that out in a day, with a little grunt help from my neighbor.

Well I've been continuing my work on RAE. I installed the new powersteering box last week. The old one was leaking from the input shaft,and main steering shaft seals.

Much better not having the puddle under the truck every time I park.

But had to flush the system a whole bunch. I grabbed some PS fluid Ihad laying around and didn't bother to check it and just dumped it in.Well it wasn't until i turned the truck on and started cycling to getthe air out I noticed a foul smell and lots of foam in the system.Turns out the fluid was contaminated with water, smelled horrible andwas a murky orange color. So up to the store and buy some fresh fluid,then drain, cycle system, drain and repeat. Still a little bit left inthe system but not bad.

So I removed both PTO covers and did the complete clean out, wiped theinside of the case, sides and bottom until it was as clean as I couldget it. Then installed the filter kit on the pass. side and refilledwith the new syntorq.

I noticed it shifts a little smoother, and it doesn't grumble quite asmuch. But before I did this I noticed that it didn't grumble as much in the mornings when the fluid was cool, once it warmed up the grumbling became much worse. So hopefully it will help, but at a minimum I atleast know have the peace of mind knowing the condition of the fluid in the tranny.

Another thing that I noticed when I pulled the PTO covers was that both the side covers had a fair amount of scratches and gouges on theinside. I think this tranny might have blown before. So who knows how old the tranny rebuild is but my input shaft cover seal is weeping abit.

Well got off work friday evening and went to my truck, fired right up,1/2 crank as always, and I let it idle for a couple minutes but itseemed to have a stumble, like a miss fire?

Put the truck in gear, and started to drive off but again it wasstumbling. Got to the exit and it stummbled hard and died. I tried to fire it up again and it fired briefely and died again almostimmediately.

I pushed it back out of the way and popped the hood. The "New" liftpump I installed a few weeks back was leaking. I tried to prime thesystem but the pump wouldn't draw any fuel. I had the wife bring downthe old one I removed, it leaked but would still prime. So installedthe old lift pump and primed the system, then tried to fire it again,nothing. Cranked it a bit, still nothing. So had to get a hook to drag old RAE home.

My injection pump has been leaking from all over the place, was going to order a reseal kit and reseal it.

I worked on it yesterday, and, Well it's running again....for now atleast.

I decided to crack the injectors, don't think they had been loosenedsince it left the factory. I only had fuel at #1, #4, and #6, #2 wasbone dry, and the others only had a trace of fuel in the injector head. Cranked it and started getting fuel squirting out at all theinjectors, tightened them down and then fired it up.

It ran rough for the first minute or so, I brought the RPM's up, lots of smoke, white in color, then it slowly cleared up. Seems to be OK for now, but I think I will transfer the plates to my 87 ram gasser unituntil I can get a piston pump, and rebuild the injection pump. Don'tfeel like any more tow bills....

Since it's off the road for a couple weeks I've decided to fix a fewmore things as well. I adjusted my valves last night, and picked upsome new valve cover gaskets, remember cummins have 6... Also going to install new uppercontrol arm bushings and ball joints, new inner and outer tie rods aswell. And try and finish up my A/C retrofit.

Well it's all back together now. Here's what was done to get around the differences in the gasser vs diesel center link and tie rod ends sizes.

I ordered all new tie rods, two diesel inner tie rods, and two gasserouter. Here is a pair of the new ones. You can see the difference!!

So to get around having to find a set of diesel lower ball joint armsand such, I decided to have the big diesel tie rods machined down to fit the gasser adjustment sleeve, and therefore have the proper size endand tapper to fit the diesel center link.

I found a local guy who works out of his back yard. I brought him inone of the old used gasser inner tie rod and adjustment sleeve, and thetwo diesel units. He then milled down the shaft size and threadedthem, Left hand thread of course. He said the hardest part was figuring out how to mount the tie rods in the milling machine since the oddshaped tie rod head was too big for his chucks. He ended up having topin them on each side, center them, then mill them down, then threadthem, then cut them to size.

Diesel and gasser tie rods.

And them assembled in the sleeve.

And now mounted in the truck.

I have also redone my upper control arms, so after the VE pump isre-sealed, new piston pump installed, new fuel heater and lines, I willget the front end realigned.

No the truck is was a gasser 84 D350, so 1 Ton, with the 4000lb front end as well. They didn't start running those HUGE tie rods until the cummins in 89.

I didn't have the time, or funds right now to locate adn install all the diesel front end components. I will be picking those up and installing them later. This is just a temperary fix to get RAE back on the road, and have things safer then they were. They may not last 20K miles but long enough to get the parts I need and get them installed.